"How to Disappear," Or, Rather, How Not To: A Critical Assessment of Lana Del Rey

Image Credit: Timothy Saccenti

In March 2023, indie superstar Lana Del Rey released her ninth studio album Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd to immense critical acclaim and commercial success. With its variety of collaborators, including Jon Batiste and Bleachers, and beautiful orchestral production accompanied by conversational lyrics, Tunnel ended up receiving a nomination for Album of the Year at the GRAMMYs. Off the heels of Tunnel’s

success, Del Rey announced her next album. Then a junior in high school, I find myself a freshman in college now, still waiting. While normally I find nothing out of the ordinary when an artist takes a long break in between album releases, countless other Del Rey fans and I are slowly but surely losing hope that this album will ever be released. Del Rey’s album release cycle has always been somewhat irregular. Having released two albums in 2021 and back-to-back LPs in 2012 and 2013, Del Rey’s announcement of Tunnel’s follow-up so soon after its release was not particularly surprising to longtime fans. She broke the news on January 31st, 2024, announcing that she would release a country album appropriately titled Lasso in September. However, between the announcement and planned release, Del Rey unexpectedly got engaged and married in late September 2024 to Jeremy Dufrene, a Louisiana-based alligator tour guide. Amidst her life changes, the month passed without a Lasso release. This was not the first time that Del Rey announced an album that ended up not being released as planned. She originally teased her 2019 album, Norman Fucking Rockwell!, as well as both of her 2021

albums, Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Blue Banisters, under different names; even still, the albums ultimately released around the same time as originally planned. Del Rey fans thus might have been prepared

for a name change, but not for the music drought that was to come.

On November 25th, 2024, Del Rey announced a new project, scheduled for release on May 21st of 2025–a thirteen-track album titled The right person will stay. The Instagram post announcement featured the album's presumed cover with Del Rey in a white dress, likely referencing her wedding. Fans gathered that this album meant Lasso was no more. However, the announcement was overshadowed by growing controversy as Del Rey began to face heavy criticism from fans regarding her political stances. Although she defined herself as a centrist in 2019, she was very anti-Trump from 2017 through 2021, speaking out numerous times against his aggressive style of politics and “delusions of grandeur”, as she told BBC radio in 2021. She also spoke in favor of

a more traditional political climate, rather than today’s increasingly polarized one. However, Del Rey’s new husband had made Facebook posts a few years prior both mocking violence against transgender individuals and promoting anti-vaccination claims. This, coupled with her notable silence during the 2024 election, led to anger from a large portion of Del Rey’s predominantly young and relatively liberal fanbase. So, when Del Rey replaced Lasso with an album emphasizing her new, controversial lover, fans had more to be upset with than the project’s almost one year delay.

But again, Del Rey continued to confuse fans as her rollout gradually abandoned this focus. On April 11th, Del Rey finally released the first single from this project, a soft ballad titled “Henry, Come On.” The track critiques some sort of ex-lover, filled with the classic Americana imagery of leather and blue jeans that Del Rey fans were accustomed to hearing in her songs; it was not, as some fans expected, a love song for her new husband Dufrene. Along with the song’s release, she announced two changes: the album would no longer be called The right person will stay, and it would no longer be released in May. The next single, released one week later, entitled “Bluebird,” described the hope needed to leave a toxic relationship. These slow, melancholic songs left many fans ultimately confused, as each track lacked the imagery of love and weddings previously associated with this project.

During this same time, Del Rey had been heavily advertising her shows scheduled for that summer, notably at the Stagecoach country music festival and a stadium tour in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Del Rey’s tour ended up going viral, but not for good reasons; Lana’s lack of enthusiasm, audio problems at multiple venues, and the fact that some performed songs used pre-recorded footage, rather than live singing, angered fans. At one show, she debuted a song called “57.5,” in reference to how many millions of listeners she has on Spotify. It was ultimately regarded as tone-deaf and simply out-of-touch, with a particularly odd lyric confessing to kissing Morgan Wallen, who is not without controversy himself. Wallen has been heavily criticized for his usage of a racial slur in 2021, his violent drunken actions in 2024, and his disregard for COVID-19 protocols at the start of the pandemic. This song was also extremely different both sonically and lyrically from the more serious, somber first two singles released in April. Taken together, the performances called Del Rey’s authenticity into question, with fans uncertain if she only promoted new work to remain relevant during the summer.

Finally, on August 26th, Del Rey announced that the project, again renamed to Stove, would be released in January 2026. Whether or not the album will actually be called that, or even be released this year, is relatively unlikely. This has now been the longest wait between albums in Del Rey’s discography, and fans have grown immensely impatient. The period of distinct change and uncertainty that Del Rey has undergone since the release of her last album, however, is highly reminiscent of the United States as a whole. From 2023 onwards, our country’s political culture has shifted so greatly that it leaves many Americans unsure of how to proceed. Del Rey’s traditional Americana aesthetic now falls into an entirely different part of our modern culture than it did when she catapulted to fame in 2012. In our current political climate, as upsetting as it might be for Del Rey fans, there is no way she can tap into her old sound without feeling tone-deaf to current realities. In fact,

if Del Rey released a country-inspired album about her marriage, she risks ostracizing the same people that adored her 2023 “sad-girl” aesthetic on Did You Know That There’s A

Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.

One fan-favorite song of Del Rey’s, “The Next Best American Record,” describes an attempt to produce a culture-defining work of art, simply because it could be “just that good.” Del Rey’s best option, moving forward, is to discard the majority of whatever record she has been piecing together through different sounds and aesthetics over the past three years. The same fans who adored her old albums have grown substantially

during this time, and Del Rey herself must grow too. In an era when music cannot be separated from politics, Del Rey defaulting to her vintage Americana-themed aesthetic, even in good faith, subjects her music to justified political scrutiny. This is not to say that Del Rey cannot release a showstopping album now, but rather that the amount of growth necessary to do so presents her with a unique challenge: excel now or fall

tragically short.

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Alexis Wilson is a freshman in the College studying Government and English.